


war of hearts

by greekdemigod



Category: The Last Ship (TV)
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/F, Fluff / Angst / Smut, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Chronological, tw guns / injury / blood / death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:55:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: A bunch of one-shots and drabbles exploring Sasha and Jesse's relationship.They are rebels with a cause, gifted and dedicated, a pilot and a sailor. And they were lovers once.*not chronological*
  
    
    we have not touched the stars
    
    nor are we forgiven, which brings us back
    
    to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes
    
    not from the absence of violence, but despite
    
    the abundance of it.





	1. i'd rather live with broken bones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sasha knows she can count on Jesse to have her back.  
> But things aren't what they used to be anymore.
> 
> [Episode tag to 3x03.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first foray into writing TLS. I hope I don't disappoint.  
> I've only watched up until 3x03 so far, so my apologies if something doesn't work with canon. I just really couldn't wait any longer to start writing about my new fave, Sasha Cooper, and TOTALLY her (ex-)girlfriend Jesse. I love them so much, ok.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Jesse always comes through for her. As Sasha stands pressed up against a hill, eyes trained down the barrel of her gun, she hears the whirring of helicopter blades and knows it’s Jesse come to save her once again. She doesn’t even need to look over her shoulder to make sure.

Although she does look, when Tom commands them to move. The bird is beautiful, dangling in a clear blue sky promising an extraction without losing anyone, and the pilot is no less beautiful herself.

Sasha shakes her head, ridding herself of all thoughts of stealing those aviator sunglasses to piss Jesse off and just how much the sight of the frowning woman will fill her stomach with jittering, because they won’t be truly safe until they’ve boarded the helicopter and thinking about her ex-girlfriend is only ever distracting.

But with Jesse at her back, what has she to fear?

They trudge back to a safe location in single file, all coiled in caution, ready to spring to action if they get ambushed by their enemies. Her palms tingle from the battering of recoil, but she keeps them tightly wrapped around the handle of the semi-automatic. All her senses are focused laser-sharp on her surroundings.

She might not have been in the navy anymore for a while now, but everything about it is still ingrained in her being. Sasha would not be able to forget how to be a soldier if she tried.

A rope ladder is thrown down and, abusing the men’s notion of chivalry and politeness, Sasha is the first one climbing hand-over-hand up the steel rungs. Wind created by the rotor system whips at her, pulls at the army-issued jacket, but she holds on steady and doesn’t falter a single time before she’s climbing up into the helicopter.

Jesse doesn’t look back until everyone is settled in and ready to go, and in that time of being ignored Sasha has lost her courage to try and be cute with the other, so all she does is nod.

She doesn’t have a headset on, but even if she had, she isn’t sure she would know what to say anyway.

It’s a long flight of rolling an empty bullet shell between her fingers and looking down at the unruly sea until the USS Nathan James comes into view.

* * *

Sasha is exhausted by the time she gets cleared to go to sleep. She doesn’t even remember how long she has been on her feet. It feels like a year ago that she welcomed Tom and his team to the event; so much has happened since. She is a known enemy of Peng now, running with a man that has a hefty price on his head.

She has been shot at, punched in the jaw and has killed more men than she has in the past half a year, all without sleeping in between.

Her body is no mystery to her. She can feel it’s only a matter of time before she crashes, and crashes _hard_ , so she should really take Tom up on the offer to pick any empty bedroom and make it her own.

But not without checking up on Jesse first.

There is a last pocket of energy within her and she taps into it, to head on up to the deck instead of descending deeper into the ship and towards the cabin of the crew. Somewhere there is a bed waiting for her, calling her name, but she ignores it.

Of course Jesse is with her helicopter. Just because she has decided to stay doesn’t mean she suddenly feels comfortable enough to invite herself to the mess hall and into a tight-knit group of navy soldiers that have been together for the past three years.

She is also covered in grease. Most of it is on her hands and her lower arms, but there are some smudges of it across her cheeks and jaws, against her throat, all over her white tank top. Muscles shift beneath her skin as she rapidly wipes a rag across the hull of the vehicle.

Sasha steps into the space and lets her footsteps announce her arrival.

“I’m glad you decided to stay,” she says softly, loud enough to be audible for Jesse but not the crewman farther up. “We can use a great pilot.”

“I didn’t do it for you.”

Jesse’s features are set with a hard distance, eyes holding none of the kindness that Sasha used to receive. They have always been on-and-off, trying and failing, too busy or too far apart or too stubborn, but they have always been best friends, too.

Maybe she has pushed it to the breaking point by going full radio silent one more time, allowing the other to think that not only was she on Peng’s side but she also had something to do with the brutal murder of her brother and her friends.

She could not have known, but she should have reached out anyway.

“I didn’t expect you would,” she finally replies, hands sinking into the pockets of her jacket so Jesse can’t see her twist them together nervously. “Jesse, I’m _really_ sorry about what happened to them. You have to believe me.”

Jesse wipes herself clean with her tank top meticulously, revealing a smooth row of abs, and Sasha knows it to be just a way to stall time. The way she has her face turned away means her emotions are so intense she can’t keep them from showing.

She never liked to show when she was sad.

When she speaks again, her voice hints at just that sadness. “I believe you.”

Relief crashes into her. Sasha has to put a hand against a metal wall at the sheer, unsteadying force of it. There is hope for them yet if Jesse no longer blames her for all those deaths and it fills her with warmth.

But they have a long way to go, she knows that. A long way that should start with the both of them getting some much-needed, much-deserved sleep.

“I can give you a full tour tomorrow, if you want. But how about for now I show you where you can sleep?”

Jesse purses her lip and watches her with dark, intense eyes for a long moment, then she shrugs and nods. “Sure.”

The corridors are just big enough to walk two people wide. Their steps echo down the long walkways and between the metal walls. There are pipes running everywhere, blinking lights from machinery and devices, and for Sasha it’s coming home.

She has spent a big part of her adult life aboard ships.

For Jesse it’s a lot less smooth sailing. Though she is used to turbulences, they’re different on the ocean and that seems to throw her for a loop. Every slight movement of the ship shakes her, forcing her to hold onto anything that’ll provide support.

When Sasha offers her arm, after excruciating minutes of not talking to each other, she doesn’t actually expect Jesse to accept it. But she does, and Sasha smiles, and it keeps her going for just a little longer.

Maybe she doesn’t know what to say _now_ , but she will. Refreshed on six hours of sleep, maybe more if she dares to hope, she’s sure she’ll know how to go about rekindling with the other.

They have too much of a history to let things become cold and hostile.

The sleeping quarters are in the middle of the ship, because even the most weathered sailors can be susceptible to sea sickness while they’re asleep, and they’re all quite non-descript. The walls are bare, the beds are neatly made up, there is little space to move and even less to store things.

The rooms are used solely to sleep and it shows.

“How _quaint_ ,” Jesse huffs. The other has always loved vast, endless space. This must be a suffocating, constrictive hell for her. But she’s staying anyway.

Sasha loves her so much.

“We can be bunkies if you want,” she quips in an attempt to diffuse some of the tension and pats the metal frame of the bunk bed. “Might make us feel like middle graders, but you get used to it surprisingly fast.”

They’re closer than they’ve been in a long time. Sasha smells the grease and sweat on Jesse, can see every minute detail of her face and the way she’s clenching her jaws, holding her breath. She is beautiful, but she is also painful to look at, because everything about her says that they aren’t alright.

Maybe they won’t ever be alright again.

And that _hurts_. Hurts more than separating from Tom or losing her husband to the Red Flu.

“I can’t.”

Sasha nods, while her heart shatters just a little and the pieces tear into her like shrapnel. She should’ve better braced herself for that, because she saw it coming, but she might be just a tad self-destructive when it comes to her feelings for Jesse.

“I understand. I’ll be across the corridor then.”

Jesse doesn’t stop her from leaving.

The room across the one she just left is unused as well. She makes it her own by draping her pants and jacket over the single chair standing by the desk, then crawls underneath the stiff, cold sheets and blanket on the bottom bunk. She slides her arms underneath her pillow and rests her head heavily down upon it. Though she tries to get comfortable, despite the mattress and sheets warming with her body heat, she keeps squirming and wriggling. Unable to find a position that works.

She is exhausted, but it still takes her an hour before she finally falls asleep and it’s with Jesse on her mind, making her whole body ache.

* * *

In the morning she is called to see Tom immediately, but Jesse would have forgone the tour anyway; the door of her room stands open and the woman is gone when Sasha steps into the corridor.

Sasha runs a hand through her dark hair, squeezes the back of her neck with it, and groans as she lets that sink in.

Then she tucks it away, deep down, where even her thoughts can’t reach. It’s something she’s had to learn throughout her military career not to succumb to the darkest, vilest parts of warfare.

Sasha Cooper walks through the USS Nathan James with her head high and a smile, as if her heart isn’t broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	2. nothing goes as planned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a routine drop of provisions and cure. For the first time, it isn't smooth sailing.  
> Jesse is not okay.
> 
> [Pre-season three.]

The night cloaks their arrival. They slip through the darkness unseen, footsteps placed deliberately and precisely. The ground is soft beneath their boots, loose sand muffling every slightest sound of movement that would give them away.

Sasha is at the front of the line, gesturing with those navy signals that the rest of them have been having trouble learning, guiding the way. She knows the area better than any of them, but she has also been trained to _do_ this.

And, most important of all, there is no trying to out-argument Sasha Cooper.

It would frustrate Jesse if she didn’t trust her completely—and if that stubbornness wasn’t also something she really liked about her.

A gun still feels weird in her hands. It’s much heavier than she expected it to be and surprisingly cold, even with her warm, clammy palms wrapped tight around it. Her finger still shakes when she holds it tensed to the trigger, but she hasn’t had to use it much except for warning shots and with Sasha around, she might never have to use it otherwise.

They’re not supposed to fight, anyway. _Get in, drop the load, get out._

But you never know what’s going to happen in this corrupted, Peng’s-men-infested country. Of all the places, she had to get stuck in the hellhole that is New China...

A twig breaks beneath her foot. Behind her, her brother shushes her, puts a hand to her lower back to push her forward. Ahead of her, Sasha is looking over her shoulder to give her a warning glare. She lifts her hands palm-up and rolls her eyes.

It’s not like she’s doing it on purpose, she’s just not used to this whole sneaking around thing.

Maybe she needs more one-on-one practice with the navy seal.

The thought brings a smile to her face for the rest of their trek up the hill, skirting around where the perimeter has its security stations. The importance of what they’re doing rests heavy on her shoulders, she is _well aware_ , but her mind has been taken back to their sparring sessions and Sasha trying to teach them, and it fills her with warmth.

 _Family_. That’s what this ragtag bunch is.

When did she start caring about Sasha as much as she does her brother and friends she has had for years?

They come to a halt. Jesse can see why—there is a structure only feet away from them, more like a shed than a house, but bright light shines from behind its windows. None of their maps said it would be here; the route dissects a somewhat unruly river, but that was supposed to be the worst of it.

Before Sasha can think over the situation, two men step outside. Their flashlights cast, whether coincidentally or on purpose, a bright beam of light all over them.

They scatter before Jesse can even think about it, ducking away from firearms that rat-tat-tat through the quiet night. A bullet slams into the ground so close to where she just lifted her foot that her heart slams against her ribs.

The world becomes gunfire and a rapid breath that passes her lips as fast as the bullets come.

She knows enough Chinese to understand that one of the men just said something equivalent to _sic ‘em, boys_. That has never been good, doesn’t matter in which language.

The gun jolts against her grip as she fires a shot. It sails past some guy’s head, but puts enough fear in him to distract him; she watches her brother take him out swiftly, a blow to the head that knocks him unconscious.

Jesse doesn’t want to kill. None of them do. Peng’s men or not, they have no right to be judge, jury and executioner. They try as hard as they can not to.

But she knows that if she must, she will. The times are so different from the days when she was just a pilot working for Doctors Without Borders.

The gun feels all the heavier for it.

People swarm them. Jesse loses track of everyone. She almost loses track of herself, adrenaline taking over, pushing her to the limit of her abilities. She ducks, dodges, tackles and punches out. She uses her weapon as a hard thing to hit with people with, which is just as effective.

The man she’s fighting, his dark eyes blazing and burning into her, doesn’t particularly enjoy it when she drives the butt of her gun hard up against his face and his cheek bone cracks.

If she pretends this is a bar fight like the ones she used to get into when she was in school, she finds it much easier to handle.

As soon as she thinks that though her legs are kicked from out beneath her and the ground is there to catch her, though not particularly softly. The crash splits her skull open, or so it feels anyway. An instant headache throbs through her head and blurs her vision.

The person hovering over her puts cold metal to the soft hollow of her throat and pushes hard. She gasps for breath, while her eyes narrow to look up at him. Defiant to the last second.

Her death does not come. A bullet pierces through his temple on one side and leaves through the other, carrying brain matter and blood in an arc behind it. She rolls aside before the body slumps on top of her and clambers upright in time to see Sasha get shot.

“No!” As if that can stop it. As if that’ll slow time, make the air syrupy thick, halt the bullet in its trajectory. She rushes to her friend’s side, but there’s nothing she can do except steady her as the heated projectile burrows into her shoulder.

Sasha still lifts that arm to shoot her shooter and only winces a little to show for it.

“Shit, okay, let me look at you,” she mutters, checking her mental list of all that they’ve brought along. The first aid kit won’t be much help though; they both know it. Jesse knows that, but she can’t accept it until Sasha gently shakes her head and steps away.

“We have to keep going. Peng will know we’re here in thirty minutes. I want to be gone by then.”

The sounds of their fight stay with her as she follows behind Sasha down the slope to the river. Weeds snag at her boots and the angle makes her shins churn. Gravity wants to drag her down, but she digs in her heels and descends if not as elegantly as Sasha at least as quickly.

They sink to their knees into the river. The water is ice cold and sludgy. If her brother hadn’t waded through with a rope tied around his waist first, for them to pull themselves along it, they would not have made it.

Her breathing rattles inside her lungs. The straps of her backpack are digging painfully into her shoulders, chafing the skin raw. The load seems to get heavier the closer they get.

Ryan, the only person left from her team at Doctors Without Borders, almost wipes out into the water, but it’s Sasha and Jesse that haul him onto the shore in time.

“You need to be careful with your shoulder,” Jesse bites at her, annoyance accompanying the headache—or maybe it’s that in the back of her mind, she is _worrying sick_ about that injury Sasha is carrying around with her now.

This is why she doesn’t want to fucking care about people in this godforsaken new world.

“I can be careful when I’m dead,” Sasha counters back, lifting her gun to eye level as she crouches forward to the fence.

Jesse ignores that remark, because if she didn’t she isn’t sure she’d be able to continue on.

She knows how fragile life is, but she can’t stand to think about how that applies to the people she holds close, too.

The fence is tall, but it’s also _old_. Matthew pries it aside easily so they don’t have to climb over. They pass beneath quickly and stay on their knees, looking around carefully, listening carefully. The quiet, broken only by crickets and the wind rustling through the trees, was deceptive earlier too.

There is no ambush waiting for them this time, just a town shaken up by the sounds of their fight. They don’t dare come out until Sasha spreads out the contents of her bag for all to see; food, clean water, first aid kits, fuel, blankets.

And she’s holding a batch of the cure, its color as blue as Jesse knows the woman’s eyes to be.

They have done it once more.

So then why does she feel so terrible?

* * *

They’ve gotten home safe. Ryan has taken the bullet out of Sasha’s shoulder and ordered her bed rest.

Yet Jesse still feels like she can’t breathe, anxious energy crackling through her. It should be over, they’re _home_ and _safe_ and they did it, but instead the near-physical pain of it seems to multiply every second she’s standing there outside her apartment, sucking at a cigarette.

She was going to stop, but that craving is the only thing she can do something about.

Every time she closes her eyes, she sees Sasha getting shot.

It was very subtle and gradual, this coming to care about her. Jesse didn’t even notice it happening until now, a few months after they started working together, it has become undeniable. She is pulsing in agony with how close she came to losing her today.

The last of the smoke billows from her lips.

She isn’t tired, but she heads up to the apartment regardless and kicks her shoes off before stepping into one of the rooms. The door clicks shut inaudibly behind her.

Her steps aren’t audible either, or maybe Sasha is too drowsy to pick up on it, because she doesn’t react to the new presence in the room at all until Jesse crawls into bed behind her.

“You’re cold,” Sasha murmurs, voice heavy with what must be pain or sleepiness. Maybe, probably both.

“Sorry,” Jesse whispers back. She lifts the blankets up to cocoon around her, too, and presses herself further against her friend, an arm sliding over her waist.

Feeling the warmth of Sasha’s body against her own, feeling her chest move with every breath she takes, smelling sterilizing fluid and sweat and earth on her—it all finally silences the buzzing of her anxiety and the thoughts whirring through her mind.

She kisses the back of Sasha’s shoulder, next to where gauze is taped to her skin, ever so gently. “Go back to sleep.”

Jesse needs some more hours to fully convince herself that Sasha isn't dead or dying—Sasha is right here, in her arms, heavy and warm in sleep, breathing evenly, even moving against her in her dreams. Sasha is alive. Sasha isn't leaving.

Sasha is alive. Sasha is alive.

Jesse trembles when the thought has finally embedded itself into her mind.  _Sasha is alive_.

It's the first night since the plague started that she doesn't have nightmares.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. a kiss with a fist is better than none

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After six weeks apart, a sparring session is definitely not what they need.
> 
> [Pre-season three.]

Missing her is an almost-but-not-quite physical ache that Jesse has been trying to ignore, but though she has pushed it to the back of her mind, it simmered and stewed there, corroding her thoughts. Her nightmares have come back with a vengeance.

But because she does not  _actively_  think about the other anymore, which is something she's more proud of than she would like to admit even to herself, Sasha Cooper is the last person she expects to find on her doorstep.

“What are you doing here?” She tries to look as unimpressed and aloof as she can despite the thin, floral-patterned bathrobe she draws tighter around herself, but she feels mostly blind-sided and sucker-punched.

It has been six weeks.  _Six weeks_ of Sasha being absolutely missing-in-action, full radio silence, sheltered in Peng’s mansion where neither Jesse with her brute force nor her brother with his finesse could ever reach her.

Nor their calls, apparently.

She wants to hold on to her anger, but her knees buckle slightly with the overwhelming relief she feels upon seeing Sasha in one piece, even  _smiling_.

God, that smile is  _so_  unfair.

“I’m here to apologize to my best friend for having been absent so long. If she’ll let me.”

Jesse rolls her eyes, but she steps aside—and she can’t stop from smiling in return, even if Sasha is annoying and hasn’t  _actually_ apologized yet. “Fine, I’ll let you grovel.”

“Grovel, huh?” Her smile becomes  _crooked_ and honest-to-God- _lights_  seem to dance in those blue eyes, and Jesse shakes her head at her friend.

“Six weeks, Cooper. I deserve a little bit of groveling.”

Sasha becomes serious at once, nods, and says, “Please forgive me.” All without balking, but all  _with_ very intense looking right into Jesse’s eyes.

Her anger stands no chance.

“Okay, forgiven, whatever. Is that all you’re here for?”

“No.” Sasha shrugs the suit jacket off her shoulders, to bare one smooth one and one marred with a two inches long scar. “My doctor cleared me, so I’m here to see if my student has kept up her practice.”

Jesse swallows. She most definitely hasn’t.

* * *

Jesse eats mat a lot, very hard. She falls on her face, her back and her arms so often that her soreness will mostly be from that, rather than because she is exerting herself in the way she’s  _supposed_ to—namely, trying to get hits in on Sasha.

Reflected-upon hand-to-hand combat, or really any kind of combat that isn’t just mindless arm-swinging, will never be her thing. But she hasn’t been  _this_  bad since the very beginning.

She has worked up a sweat; a sheen of it is stretched across her skin, matting locks of hair against the sides of her face and the back of her neck, soaking into the tank top and shorts she has changed into. Her face burns with equal parts heat and shame.

There is a flush on Sasha’s face too, though, and beads of sweat dotting her hairline and sliding down her slender neck.

Blinking rapidly, Jesse tells herself to  _fucking focus_ , to stop being distracted by a  _fucking girl_ , to keep her  _fucking feelings_ in check. She scrambles upright and lifts her fists in front of her face. “Again.”

Jesse throws out her left arm as hard as she can, but Sasha easily uses that momentum against her to floor her in one quick swipe. The breath whooshes out of her with a pained groan.

“One day you might actually land a mean left hook,” Sasha taunts, looking down at her.

Jesse spits and tries to kick at Sasha’s shin. “Yeah, I’ll aim it at your fucking face.”

“One more time, let’s go.” Sasha yanks her upright with her left arm, quite obviously favoring it over her right one, even though her shoulder is supposed to be fully healed.

Jesse has noticed the woman’s face twist sometimes when she’s blocking or punching right, but it isn’t until now, panting and sweating and about ready to give up, that she thinks to abuse this weakness.

It’s not nice, and it definitely wouldn’t hold up in a real fight where she won’t have enough time to discover things like it, but she wants to wipe that smug grin off Sasha’s face. It looks too distractingly good on her.

She jabs right and left in quick procession, blocked by skilled hands. Then when Sasha mimics her, Jesse manages to block left and lets right come through. Her arm hooks over Sasha’s and pulls down; again, she watches as Sasha purses her lips and her eyes crinkle in pain.

Now that she’s distracted, Jesse goes in for the ‘killing blow’, her foot slides behind an ankle and pulls.

Everything happens very fast then. One moment she feels victorious, the next Sasha drags her down in her fall, is kind enough to break it for her, and Jesse lands on top of her friend with a swallowed cry of surprise.

Sasha curses, wheezes, and lets her head thud back against the mat. A loud laugh rings through the room seconds later.

Jesse can’t stop looking at the throat stretched back and taut beneath her, the glistening skin that is freckled—she has never been close enough before to see it, she realizes, and it makes her stomach do somersaults.

She also gets to feel the body beneath her in a way that’s entirely mind-clouding; Sasha’s hips dig into her stomach, and her breasts slide up against hers with every breath, and her legs shift to accommodate her between them.

Jesse puts one hand on either side of Sasha’s shoulders, while blue eyes look up at her imploringly, eyelashes fluttering too fast to count—but she could, if she wanted to. She's close enough to see very light freckles on the bridge of Sasha's nose, feel the woman's breath caress her lips.

It's a matter of inches.

She has been craving this proximity, even if she hasn't been thinking about Sasha. And she wants the smooth, soft glide of lips together; hands beneath her shirt; nails scratching down her stomach; a hammering breath against her neck, the sound thundering through her ears. She  _has_  to see Sasha come undone, fall apart beneath her hands.

But she gets up onto shaky feet instead, ignoring the way her whole body pulses with her need to just kiss that aggravating, impressive woman already.

"I'm done for today." She pulls the elastic band out of her hair and wipes a hand across her face, which feels as hot to the touch as is to be expected. "I'll be in the shower if you need me."

There's a train wreck staring back at her from the mirror, all crimson-stained skin and wide, dilated eyes. She clenches her fingers tight around the edge of the sink and waits until her arms stop shaking.

"You did well," she tells herself, but everything inside her tells her otherwise.

This is why she isn't ever friends with women. It's treacherously easy to fall for them.

She gets the hot water running as she peels layers of sweat-soaked fabric off of her. Her shower head sputters and the pipes in the walls groan loudly and steam billows out of the cabin, so she focuses on those sounds instead of the whining thump of her heart.

It feels good to be enveloped in heat. She tilts her head back and lets the water scorch down her face, wash the sweat off her skin.

She is trying so hard not to think about Sasha and every detail of how she felt beneath her, that she misses the sound of the door opening.

But she can't miss the fogged-up glass door of the shower cabin being pulled open, or the clothed woman stepping in, or that same woman pressing her against the tile wall with one steady hand against her hip, or that woman kissing her.

Sasha’s mouth is soft, but she kisses like she does everything else: with honed skill. She is hard and intense; Jesse can’t do anything but shake beneath that force.

Her hands clench around Sasha’s hips, to drag her back in the other tries to inch away. She feels the lips against her own curl into a grin and bites, to try and make it disappear, but that only makes it worse.

Jesse is hyper-aware of everything: the hot water battering down on them, the slide of wet fabric against her, Sasha’s breath against her mouth and a hand burying into her hair.

She hisses a moan when Sasha tugs; pain prickles across her scalp, but it’s almost embarrassing to admit how much she enjoys it. When lips attach to the column of her neck with deadly precision, zeroing in right on the spot where her pulse beats wicked against her skin, her moan is much, much louder—and she’s so overwhelmingly glad her brother’s not home.

“Sasha,” she mutters, but her breath hitches around the name, because those are _teeth_ grazing across her throat and it reduces her to a mess of pulsing heat and throbbing arousal. “Wait.”

It’s the moment of distraction on the other’s part that allows Jesse to get the upper hand. She slams Sasha against the opposing wall and grins when that pretty mouth falls open in a gasp.

Jesse leans down so she can press her lips to the scar on Sasha’s shoulder. After so many of her recent nightmares had featured this woman getting shot, it is cathartic to feel for herself that she has healed. Sasha shudders against her.

“You’re overdressed,” she mutters, then fists a hand into Sasha’s tank top and hauls it roughly over the other’s head, letting it fall wet and heavy on the floor of her shower cabin. The sports bra takes a little longer, but Jesse is nothing if not _extremely_ dedicated to getting it off.

Sasha is powerfully built, pale skin stretched taut over cords of muscle. Jesse touches her hand low against Sasha’s defined abs and grins when she feels them tense against her fingers.

“Jesse.” Her gaze moves upwards again upon being called and finds Sasha watching with clear hunger in her eyes.

She is dragged into another kiss by the neck, Sasha’s grip strong and demanding, and for now she’ll let it slide. But she’s very intent on showing Sasha just _who_ ’s in charge.

And she’s very intent on making Sasha scream.

It’s hard to think in that moment though as Sasha bites down on her bottom lip and smiles as she does so, eyebrow arching as if asking what she’s going to do.

Jesse plants her hands against Sasha’s shoulders and pins the woman harder against the wall. If she had kept up her practice it would be easier to keep the other subdued, but she’ll take that as motivation to do better in the future.

She mouths along Sasha’s jaw, takes her ear lobe between her lips and sucks, then whispers: “Be a good girl for me, will you, Cooper?” Hips buck against her; she’ll take that as a yes.

Them being wet aides her exploration; she drags her hands down, palms at Sasha’s breasts, skims across her hips. The shorts come off effortlessly, as do the panties. And then Jesse discovers that Sasha’s wet in more ways than one.

The other moans and lets her head thud back against the wall. Jesse puts her mouth to the hollow of her throat, while her fingers drag slow circles around her clit.

This is what she wanted—Sasha’s beautiful sounds, that weapon of a body becoming flesh and blood once more, warm and alive, contorting in the most enchanting ways.

Jesse sinks her teeth into Sasha’s neck at the same time as her fingers sink into her; Sasha seizes against her, a strangled, warbled cry announcing for everyone on their floor just who is fucking her.

The palm of her hand grounds against Sasha’s clit, but her fingers go slow, curling and stroking only with the barest strength. It doesn’t take long before Sasha’s trying to remedy that by swiveling her hips, riding her fingers faster, but Jesse pushes her free arm horizontally against her, to try and push her back.

“What did I tell you, Sasha?”

“ _Bite_ me, Jesse.”

It’s spit out sarcastically, but Jesse tilts her head sideways and grins. “So that really does it for you, huh?”

The other indeed trembles viciously when Jesse bites her again, and she can feel muscles start to tighten around her fingers, so she drives it home by rubbing her thumb rapidly against her clit and biting down the hardest she has yet, in Sasha’s untouched shoulder, because she is leaving a goddamn fucking mark.

Sasha is so beautiful when she comes; her eyes squeeze shut, her nose scrunches up, and her body trashes in such a weirdly elegant way. Her thighs quiver, then close hard around Jesse’s wrist, trapping her inside.

“Goddamn, Cooper,” Jesse whispers as she dusts kisses across that contorted face. “I really wanted you to scream.”

“Next... time...” Sasha pants, smirking despite her flushed breathlessness and the way she’s still wrapped tight around Jesse’s hand.

Jesse kisses her cheek in a very uncharacteristic show of affection and traces her fingers along Sasha’s temple, to move wet hair out of her face. “I’ll hold you to that.”

“Please do.”

Sasha does several things at once then; she shuts off the water, maneuvers Jesse to take her place, and drops to her knees.

Jesse is reduced to a quietly trembling, quietly whimpering mess with just a few well-placed kisses along her thighs and the junction of her hips. Getting to look down at _Sasha Cooper_ , impressive facial features and eyes included, has something to do with that though.

Because Sasha is always so composed and so professional, and now she is spreading Jesse open by lifting a thigh over her shoulder so she can lick into her, and she’ll eat her words and her whole damn ego if that isn’t the hottest thing she’ll ever see.

The thoughts stop after that. Sasha must have done this before, because her tongue is too skilled otherwise—every flick of it lands with a devastating precision, the pressure alternates so fast that it keeps Jesse on her toes, unable to do anything about the way she is writhing against the wall and against Sasha’s mouth.

All she can hear is the pounding of her heart in her ears; she knows damn well she’s making sounds, but Sasha pulls them out of her.

Sasha came fast, Jesse comes faster—it’s embarrassing.

She presses a hand to her face and shakes her head slowly, unable to look down and see how much smugger she has made Sasha. But when she finally does open her eyes, all Sasha looks is happy.

Her heart has never felt fuller, more whole.

Sasha takes her by the hand and tugs her out of the shower cabin, and Jesse expects to be lead straight to her bed room but instead she is wrapped into a towel and tugged closer by it, so she can be wrapped in a pair of arms too.

She tugs Sasha down by the chin and kisses her, even if it’s a little difficult to do when she can’t stop smiling.

“Anyways, I meant to only come in here to say you should really practice more.”

Jesse barks a laugh. “I know something better we can do with our free time now.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah... I’ll show you.”


	4. put your arms around me and i'm home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After saving the kidnapped members from Takehaya, Sasha doesn't quite know what to do with herself.  
> Jesse always seems to be the answer.
> 
> [Episode tag to 3x06.]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a lil moment that I really wanted to write after watching 3x05 and 3x06 with my fellow Dutchies today.

There are no words to describe the atmosphere in the cargo bay where they’ve set up cots and are tending to the injured crew members. Sasha shuffles without much aim through the aisles, talking to a person here and there—soaking up the relief, the pain, the memories.

She isn’t needed here. Maybe she isn’t even _wanted_ here.

These poor, traumatized people see a stranger when she smiles at them and while the others may have accepted her aboard, she is a long way from being something more to them.

It’s easy to read in their eyes that she’s intruding.

She understands. Her feet carry her further away from the scene of the bittersweet reunion while her hands hang limp and useless by her sides. It’s not a feeling she particularly enjoys—her arsenal of skills is so wide and impressive, there is always _something_ she can do.

But not here, not now.

It should not have taken her this long to realize that she isn’t the only one, but her mind is still coming back from the island. _Jesse_.

She looks small, the way she’s sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up and her arms resting on top of them. There is a can of cherry coke in one of her hands; slender fingers wrapped loosely around it, spinning it slowly within her grasp.

“You were great out there,” Sasha mutters as she sits down cross-legged next to her. The metal is hard and sturdy against her back, echoing the way the Nathan James ploughs through the water. She feels the vibrations of it to the fingertips she presses into her palms.

Jesse looks over at her. Sasha can’t help but smile when unruly locks of curly hair slide in front of her face, obscuring part of those expressive, endless brown eyes. But she keeps her hands to herself, no matter how much she craves to just _use_ them already. Jesse tucks her hair back herself and takes a sip of her soda before she says, “Yeah, you too.”

They have had their fair shares of awkward silences and even more awkward situations. This is not one of them. The silence is just their inability to put _this_ to words.

What they just had to do. The fact that, _finally_ , the crew is back complete—but it’ll never be complete again. And knowing that they might be crew members, but they’re not part of the family yet.

Jesse’s fingers are as sure on Sasha’s hand as they are on the handles of her helicopter’s steering wheel when she lifts her arm up and slides underneath, to rest her head atop Sasha’s shoulder.

The distance between them has been so vast that Sasha is stunned to see this new development. But she melts into it, taking it in stride like she does all unexpected things that are thrown her way, and loops her arms around Jesse’s body.

She can hear the voices from the crew floating to her. It does her good to hear some laughs, and how much Tom and Mike do to lift everyone’s spirits as soon as they join the others. Sasha leans her head back, closes her eyes, and smiles.

She _understands_. They are a family.

And she has hers, right here, pressed into her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
